Georgia voters split on Jackson and Bottoms in new poll

Georgia's 2026 early voting started with record turnout, more than 188,000 people casting ballots in person on the first day. That's according to the Secretary of State's office. The first day of voting topped turnout from four years ago by roughly 53,000 voters. The total vote count so far in the first two days is more than 309,000 votes. Well, strong turnout. And like we always like to say it's easy to vote and hard to cheat and voters right now obviously you know they're just energized i fully expect we'll probably have you know numbers that'll beat the previous record of 2022 we're almost at four million secretary of state Brad Raffensperger went on to say all the changes they've made here in Georgia only improve the voter experience early voting runs through the 30th we have a new poll out this afternoon in the Georgia governor's race the Insider Advantage poll of 800 likely Georgia voters shows Republican Rick Jackson is maintaining a slight lead over Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms. The poll conducted Monday and Tuesday shows Jackson with 49 percent and Bottoms with 47 percent. Four percent of the likely voters polled remained undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 3.46 percent. Insider Advantage founder Matt Towery says his polling across the country shows a tremendous surge in senior voters who have moved toward republican candidates but the african-american vote was strong in the first day of early voting yesterday which reinforces his belief that this will be a close race we talked about the new poll tonight on our political program Red Clay Rundown here is some of what our experts Brian Robinson and Melita Easters had to say. What's unusual here is how stuck in molasses this race has been. We have seen Rick Jackson with his two three-point lead for a long period of time and it's just not moving at all. It does seem like the electorate have made a decision about this race very early on and so at this juncture to say the captain obvious thing that everybody who doesn't know what they're talking about says it all comes down to turnout right? It does look like the electorate is fairly evenly divided as far as who they would want. I think it's still too close to call. I think, first off, we have to remember that this is the first election cycle since Georgia became a majority-minority state. And so that might have some impact on how the votes eventually turn out in November when we finally get to election day. You can watch Red Clay Rundown every weeknight at 8 on Fox Local.